$2,999 Mac Pro to go on sale in December in all its Dalek-resembling glory

Made in the USA: Mac Pro overhaul finally ready for an eager legion of buyers.

The long gap between releases of Apple's most powerful computer—the Mac Pro—is finally about to come to an end. The company today announced that the first major upgrade of the Pro since August 2010 will be released in December.

The entry-level model will cost $2,999 and will come with a 3.7GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12GB of DRAM, dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics chips with 2GB VRAM each, and 256GB of SSD. The machine is being assembled in the US, Apple said today.

Mac users with heavy processing needs, such as graphics professionals, were disappointed when Apple didn't refresh the stagnating platform last year. CEO Tim Cook promised that great news for Mac Pro users would come sometime in 2013, and Apple delivered on that promise in June when it unveiled a Mac Pro with a smaller design and upgraded internals. At the time, Apple said only that it would be "coming later this year," and the company didn't announce the official launch window until today.

The Mac Pro now has a cylindrical design, looking much like a black trash can. Its shell can be taken off in a "Darth Vader's helmet" sort of way, revealing futuristic looking innards that I like to think resemble a Dalek.

The Mac Pro.

Apple

Daleks.

BBC

As we noted in previous coverage, fully loaded Pros can feature up to 12 cores-worth of Intel Xeon E5 chips, with up to 30MB L3 cache and 40GBps PCI Express bandwidth. There's a four-channel DDR3 memory controller that runs at 1866MHz, delivering up to 60GBps of memory bandwidth (twice as high as the previous model). Two AMD FirePro GPUs with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM each help support up to three 4K displays, with GPU performance going from 2.7 to seven teraflops. Apple also promised 528GB/s total bandwidth.

"There's never been a system that can do what the Mac Pro can do with 4K video," Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller said today.

The Mac Pro can have up to 1TB of user-accessible flash storage, with 1.2GB/s read speeds and 1GB/s write speed. Wireless connectivity is provided with 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.

With its cover off, ports for Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 1.4 are revealed. Thunderbolt in particular is impressive, with six ports, each supporting up to six daisy-chained devices, 36 in total. Thunderbolt will provide 20Gbps throughput, Apple said today.

The new Mac Pro design also helps with power and cooling. Instead of multiple heat sinks and fans, heat is conducted away from the CPUs and GPUs and distributed across a "unified thermal core." That means "if one processor isn’t working as hard as the others, the extra thermal capacity can be shared efficiently among them," Apple has said.

The Mac Pro is environmentally friendly, with Energy Star 6 and EPEAT Gold certifications, Apple said. In an idle state, it consumes 43 watts and will be about as loud as a Mac mini.

Although the specs and re-design are impressive, the small package isn't completely beneficial to potential users. Dave Girard noted in his "Critical look at the new Mac Pro" that the machine has "a truly epic lack of expandability." Apple called it "the most expandable Mac ever built" because of its Thunderbolt ports, but Girard noted that it has no extra internal drive bays, only four USB 3.0 ports, and no optical drive. There's also no Nvidia option for the GPU.

The Mac Pro may not have everything users want, and it likely won't be the best-selling Mac computer. But with the three-year gap in major updates making Windows-based workstations look attractive even to Mac devotees, the Pro's release is important for Apple to hold on to users with the most intensive computing needs.

Apple’s event is currently in progress, and we will update this article as more details become available. Ars is there in person, so for up-to-the-minute information you can follow our liveblog.

Listing image by Apple

Promoted Comments

I'm in no way a "media creation pro". I do a lot of bootstrapping statistics and phylogenetic trees (which is moderately computationally intensive) in my day job. BUT, I am also a pretty high end hobbyist photographer... And to put the $3K cost of the entry level machine in context; this year alone I spent ~$10,000 on a 3 week trip to Chile, dragging with me ~20K worth of photographic equipment to pursue this hobby.

I am a heavy Aperture user, occasional Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

The entry level machine kicks my current MacPro's butt, and costs less than the D800e I shoot with every couple of weeks, yet I am in front of my MacPro every single day. I'm probably going to buy one...

I suspect that the target/potential audience is broader and deeper than many suspect.

Spec wise this is pretty close in price to existing workstations from Dell and HP in that price range and feature set. The Mac has Thunderbolt2 while they have internal expandability. Depending on your usage one may be better than the other. Generally I would go with internal known parts over pie in the sky maybe someone will make them parts.

The big differentiator for pro hardware is warranty support. What kind of support does the Mac Pro have? HP Z230's have three year next business day parts and labor and 24/7 phone support standard. With options to buy upgrades as well. Last I knew Apple had nothing like this.

Wow is that terrible, even worse then I'd feared. The train wreck was visible from a long, long ways off but that's still really depressing. Just adding a few regular HDDs and even one or two card bays, something that even a bargain basement $50 case offers in spades, will add at least another $1k on top of that too. Disgusting.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

Wow is that terrible, even worse then I'd feared. The train wreck was visible from a long, long ways off but that's still really depressing. Just adding a few regular HDDs and even one or two card bays, something that even a bargain basement $50 case offers in spades, will add at least another $1k on top of that too. Disgusting.

You aren't the target market if, like me, you can't afford to spend $3000 on a computer without good reason. Don't be so self-absorbed as to see only your buying decision making process as the correct one.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

Wow is that terrible, even worse then I'd feared. The train wreck was visible from a long, long ways off but that's still really depressing. Just adding a few regular HDDs and even one or two card bays, something that even a bargain basement $50 case offers in spades, will add at least another $1k on top of that too. Disgusting.

You aren't the target market if, like me, you can't afford to spend $3000 on a computer without good reason. Don't be so self-absorbed as to see only your buying decision making process as the correct one.

Stop being such an Apple hater. I've owned Apple's high end Macs since the IIfx, with a range of PowerMacs along the way and both the 2006 and 2008 Mac Pros, and have spent $3k+ multiple times. Being willing to spend significant amounts on a system is not the same fucking thing as not wanting value for your buck. Apple's offering is horrible anyway you cut it but at least would have been more justifiable if it was also a ton cheaper. But by making it a worse performer, less flexible for no purpose, and thus hugely unnecessarily more expensive, they've also made it a really bad value.

↓ Moderation: (show post)

Seriously, WTF is wrong with you? Why do you think that not wanting something bargain basement means you're happy to piss money away for absolutely no reason?

Several years ago I worked on a digital asset management system project. My observation was the video editors more often than not worked on shows with external hard drives. Usually high end fire-wire models. Sometimes small external raid connected devices.

I think there's a lot of fair knocks on the Mac Pro in terms of expansion, but I don't think hard drive space is one of the areas. I think what's going to kill the platform is the GPU limitations.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

Do you think that folks who work on multiple large projects in a professional setting keep them on their primary OS hard disk?

Wow is that terrible, even worse then I'd feared. The train wreck was visible from a long, long ways off but that's still really depressing. Just adding a few regular HDDs and even one or two card bays, something that even a bargain basement $50 case offers in spades, will add at least another $1k on top of that too. Disgusting.

You aren't the target market if, like me, you can't afford to spend $3000 on a computer without good reason. Don't be so self-absorbed as to see only your buying decision making process as the correct one.

Stop being such an Apple hater. I've owned Apple's high end Macs since the IIfx, with a range of PowerMacs along the way and both the 2006 and 2008 Mac Pros, and have spent $3k+ multiple times. Being willing to spend significant amounts on a system is not the same fucking thing as not wanting value for your buck. Apple's offering is horrible anyway you cut it but at least would have been more justifiable if it was also a ton cheaper. But by making it a worse performer, less flexible for no purpose, and thus hugely unnecessarily more expensive, they've also made it a really bad value.

Seriously, WTF is wrong with you? Why do you think that not wanting something bargain basement means you're happy to piss money away for absolutely no reason? Being premium is very much not the same thing as not having good value.

Uh, you do know this has 2 professional level graphics cards right? The ones that cost thousands of dollars? You know, so your skewed view of "value" is pretty much worthless since you just state the cpu and then ignore the rest.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

I know several "Multimedia creation professionals" that use iMacs and Macbook Pros for development. Seeing as this is much more expensive and for "professionals", it's only entry-level in the fact that it's the base model.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

I know several "Multimedia creation professionals" that use iMacs and Macbook Pros for development. Seeing as this is much more expensive and for "professionals", it's only entry-level in the fact that it's the base model.

Neat. They can get by with that they have then.

Or, they'd be better served and more productive with this system. Maybe you should have them get on here and speak for themselves.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

Professional shops don't use NAS or SAN at all...

Fair point of course. My mistake. I hadn't thought about just how limited of an audience this is being targeted at.

It's a pretty safe take-away to assume that Apple is now firmly putting the Mac Pro out of the pro-am and lightweight-production realm into the Pro Workstation realm. There's gonna be a lot of griping from folks who were used to buying the lowest end Pro as an alternative to the higher-end iMac.

Can anybody find a thing about the "FirePro D300"? AMD's site has nothing to say on the matter, and Google finds only references to how the new Mac Pro will have two of them. Is it a total joke, as is traditional for the default option in Mac Pros, or did they up their game on this one?

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

Do you think that folks who work on multiple large projects in a professional setting keep them on their primary OS hard disk?

Exactly, this is what all the thunderbolt ports are for - Fiber channel HBAs or 10 GbE ethernet ports to connect to high speed storage. NOT external GPUs as people keep bitching that thunderbolt is "too slow" for.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

Do you think that folks who work on multiple large projects in a professional setting keep them on their primary OS hard disk?

Exactly, this is what all the thunderbolt ports are for - Fiber channel HBAs or 10 GbE ethernet ports to connect to high speed storage. NOT external GPUs as people keep bitching that thunderbolt is "too slow" for.

Spec wise this is pretty close in price to existing workstations from Dell and HP in that price range and feature set. The Mac has Thunderbolt2 while they have internal expandability. Depending on your usage one may be better than the other. Generally I would go with internal known parts over pie in the sky maybe someone will make them parts.

The big differentiator for pro hardware is warranty support. What kind of support does the Mac Pro have? HP Z230's have three year next business day parts and labor and 24/7 phone support standard. With options to buy upgrades as well. Last I knew Apple had nothing like this.

An entry level machine with a $3k price tag seems like an oxymoron. Given the limitations, it will be interesting to see who hangs on and who jumps. I suspect that those that stay will be as much for the software as anything else.

$3k isn't a bad entry level machine if you're actually using it as a workstation for what it's target market is: Multimedia creation professionals.

For home users, you're correct, this is not a machine aimed for them.

But then given that it ships with a 256GB SSD, it's apparently not for multimedia creation professionals either....

Aye, HP's top end workstations doesn't start far below that afaik.

Anyway I like the looks, but as others have said in the past it's a workstation... That isn't the reason people buy workstations.

And there had better come an avalanche of Thunderbolt devices. I want affordable Thunderbolt.